for these discrepancies, and if I caught the Almanac in
what appeared to be a deliberate lie, to expose it, here.
With this in view, I started to count the people myself.
Unfortunately, however, I did not start early enough
in the evening. When I had only a little more than
half of them counted, they began to put out their lights
and go upstairs to bed. And, oddly enough, though
they leave their parlor shades up, they have a way of
drawing those in their bedrooms. I was, therefore,
forced to stop counting.

I do not attempt to explain this Kalamazoo custom
with regard to window shades. All I can say is that,
for whatever reason they follow it, their custom is not
metropolitan. New Yorkers do things just the other
way around. They pull down their parlor shades, but
leave their bedroom shades up. Any one who has lived
in a New York apartment house in summer can testify
to that. Probably it is all accounted for by the fact
that in a relatively small city, like Kalamazoo, the cen-
sus takers go around and count the people in the early
evening, whereas in New York it is necessary for those
who make the reckoning to work all night in order to-
as one might say--get all the figures.

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